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Wow we’re two weeks into 2013 already. I’m sitting in my office looking at my white board. Usually it’s covered with equations and free body diagrams for some aircraft part or another, along with doodles from Tim. (When he is feeling creative he likes to draw things on my board. Most recently it was pizza slice shaped versions of The Avengers – Don’t ask.) However, right now it is completely covered with the Alabama Phoenix Festival to-do list. I’m talking about three columns of things that have to be done between now and May (most of them sooner rather than later). And the list is nowhere near complete. It will get longer before it gets shorter. I can’t help feeling like we’re way behind and we’ll never get it all done in time. And as I am thinking all of this, I see Bo Bearden tweeting that it’s only 126 days left until APF (I swear he is trying to give me an aneurysm). But the feeling passes quickly because I’m used to big projects. I just work through it one thing at a time. At least we’re ahead of where we were at this point last year!

Last year we spent the week between Christmas and New Years working on the TARDIS. Most of the assembly was finished that week, but because of a really bad cold that kept me off my game for most of January, building the base took much longer than expected.

Just look at the numbers:

We had maybe 20 guests on our guest list last year. Right now we have 65 guests announced, which is already more than the final count last year. We’re also working on the final details with several more guests (Not being able to announce them yet is killing me).

The prereg count was 5 or 6 last year. This past Friday alone we had twice that sign up. We are well into double digits, and I’m hoping to see three digits by March.

The vendor application was nothing more than a line on the To-Do list. I think we had it online sometime in late February. Right now the application has been sent to last year’s vendors that signed up for first go. Six have already signed up. Next week it gets sent to the long list of new vendors who have been asking for information. It also goes online next week.

We had two sponsors, KM Wealth Management and Kingdom Comics last year. This year we are already up to six sponsors, including the Alabama Ghostbusters, who helped bring the wonderful Robin Shelby (Slimer) in last year. This year they are presenting both the return of Robin and Ghostbuster Winston Zeddmore, Ernie Hudson. We are also thrilled to have Macabre Mansion working with us to bring in both the talented Daniel Roebuck (with way too many fantastic credits to list here) and Buck Rogers himself, Gil Gerard.

While we may be behind where I’d like, we are still many miles ahead of where we were at this time last year. So bring it on Bo! We made it through last year and come May 24th we’ll be ready for an even bigger and better APF.